SUMMARY OF KEY CONCEPTS

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The CSD tries to report objectively what is presented in the literature. Therefore, in order to guarantee that the CCDC do not impose their idea of what is right or wrong but leave this judgement up to the crystallographers and the peer review process, suspicious crystal structures are not usually actively corrected without the authors consent. Inevitably this will mean that a small number of CSD entries will contain errors.

•	It is extremely important, for any scientist, to question the validity of any results or data they might obtain or be provided with.

•	When using experimentally determined results the ability to inspect and evaluate the underlying data is a key advantage and one that is not readily afforded by theoretical methods.

•	The accumulated crystal structure data in the CSD provides a wealth of structural information which, with rare exceptions, can be used to determine precise and unbiased estimates of molecular dimensions and conformational preferences.